


Until Death Do Us Part

by meyari



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Brainwashing, Character Death, Child Abuse, Insanity, M/M, Murder, Present Tense, Resurrection, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-19
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-03 22:25:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meyari/pseuds/meyari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim always expected to die for the Mission. He just never expected it to be at a former Robin's hands or to die so many times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Until Death Do Us Part

Tim pants as he runs. He won't last much longer. The wound on his side is bleeding too much and he's been playing this deadly game of hide and seek for too long. It's only a matter of time before he'd caught and then he'll be dead. Really, all he can hope for is to die before he's caught. Being caught would be much worse than bleeding out on a rooftop or in some dark, stinking alley.

He might have made it to the Cave, to safety, before dying but the broken shoulder and possibly broken ankle make that impossible. Every step is agony. Tim keeps moving despite the pain. There's so much pain but the fear of what's tracking him is so much worse that Tim keeps going despite everything. There's no way that he's going to let himself be caught. No. Not allowed. When he catches himself slowly sliding towards the ground in a dark alley, Tim tries to stop it, to stand, to keep moving.

His body betrays him by slumping all the way down to the noisome concrete. Tim manages to drag himself into the darkest corner between two buildings and a stinking garbage bin; sure that it's not enough. Even with his vision going into a tunnel of echoing darkness Tim can see his blood trail. Splotches and drips of red lead straight to his poor hiding spot.

Footsteps, slowly measured footsteps, come closer. Each echoing impact of the heavy heel makes Tim's heart beat faster, makes the blood spill out, makes his body shake. He really didn't think that it would end like this, bleeding out in an alley while cowering in terror. Tim had thought that it would be a simple gunshot wound to the head or a knife in the back. He shuts his eyes as his murderer stalks into the alley. Only once the footsteps stop does he open his eyes. Red Hood's featureless mask looks back at him from behind the barrel of a gun.

"Time to die, Replacement," Jason says in a tone that would be kind if it weren't so dark and twisted.

Tim doesn't get to reply before there's a flash of light and something impacts his chest like being hit by a truck. Like dying, in fact. The last thing he hears is Jason's broken laughter as he delights in Tim's death.

He comes back to green, green and rage and fear and the total absence of pain. Tim jerks, stunned to find himself alive, if bound so tightly that he could barely twitch. The nakedness hardly registers against the Pit madness and confusion. As he's hauled up out of the bubbling green insanity, Tim hears Jason's laugh again. It's no less insane, no less terrifying but the giggles erupting from Tim's mouth are just as insane so perhaps it's okay. Jason wipes some of the green off Tim's face, nodding with satisfaction at what he sees.

"That's better, Replacement," Jason says. The helmet is gone but he's still got the red domino with its white lenses on. Tim wishes he could see Jason's eyes. "Welcome back to the land of the living."

"Why?" Tim asks once the giggles die down into shaking and a sort of wildness that makes him want to claw his skin off.

"You can't be Robin if you don't die, Replacement," Jason says in such a gentle tone, almost a tender tone of voice. The smile twisting his lips could be called sweet if it weren't for the way his fingers dug into Tim's chin. "That's how it works. Dickie-bird got to live. B only cut his heart out metaphorically. I had to die once and come back. That's for the second little bird. The third little bird needs to take it to the next order of magnitude."

Tim's breath caught as the shaking switched from reaction at the resurrection to terror. He watched as Jason pulled out his knife (so long, so long, almost as long as Tim's forearm) and slid it along Tim's stomach. It left a long bleeding cut but it also cut the ropes holding Tim in place. The ropes holding Tim's legs are dealt with in the same way, granting him movement but also leaving him with a cut that might limit his mobility if he weren't so high on Pit madness and terror.

When Jason looks towards Tim's naked crotch with undisguised interest, Tim kicks and twists the way Shiva taught him. He somehow manages to catch Jason by surprise, knocking the older, larger boy back into the Pit. Tim runs with Jason's roars of rage in his ears. Outside there are dead bodies, ninjas, Talia, a surprisingly decapitated Ra's al Ghul. There's a young boy with Bruce's eyes and Talia's dark skin cowering in one corner. He runs when Tim appears, saying something in Arabic that Tim can't follow.

Tim follows the boy who screams what seems to be 'don't follow me!' They burst out into the sun and Tim staggers in surprise. They're in the desert, somewhere hot, probably the Middle East. He stops; trying to orient himself but the boy keeps running, escaping. He's hit in the shoulder by what appears to be a tranquilizer dart.

"Ah, ah, ah," Jason says from behind Tim. "Told you to keep your ass there, Demon spawn."

"Who?" Tim asks to buy for time.

"Your replacement," Jason says so cheerfully that the Pit rage makes Tim want to rip his throat out. "Talia bred him. Bruce's actual son. Give it a few years and he'll sweep in and take it all away, just like I did to Dickie and you did to me. It's awesome, Replacement. Constant supply of Robins, all for B's stupid little war."

"What will you do to him?" Tim asks. 

He tries to dart in the other direction when Jason looks at the boy but a tranquilizer dart hits him in the side. Tim tears it out only to be shot with Jason's real gun this time. It takes out his knee, sending Tim crashing to the hot paving stones below. A second shot destroys his shoulder for a second time. Tim screams, shock and pain warring with the dose of tranquilizer that he'd gotten from the dart. Moving is almost impossible. Tim still tries.

"Doesn't matter yet, Replacement," Jason says so cheerfully that Tim tries to kick Jason with his good leg. Jason calmly breaks it at the ankle and thigh. He nods at the way Tim's scream breaks in the middle. "See, you're not ready to help me with it. Dickie-bird helped me be the perfect Robin, shaped me into what I became. Now I'm helping you. Pretty soon you'll be ready to help me shape Damian, too."

"No," Tim pants as the shock overwhelms him. "I won't."

"You will," Jason says completely confidently as he pulls his gun. "Here's death number two, Replacement. Only eight more to go and you'll be perfect."

Tim screams as Jason's finger tightens on the trigger. He doesn't feel the bullet hit his forehead, tearing through his brain. The green of the pit is welcome when he wakes up. He's tied again, but when Jason pulls him out the boy is there too, bound and gagged, with a black eye that's swollen shut. Defiance wars with fear on the boy's face.

His third death comes immediately because Tim kicks Jason in the groin with all his might. He dies with his head held under the surface of the Lazarus Pit's roiling green until he drowns. Coming back from that death is harder than the other two because Tim can taste the green in his mouth, down his throat. When he coughs and gags, trying to get the green out of his mouth, Jason curses at him and tells him that it's his own goddamn fault.

The bodies are gone outside in the hallway, though when Tim manages to catch a glimpse out one window he can see Ra's' head on a pole in the courtyard. Damian is quiet and still, watching Tim who only then realizes that he's cursing under his breath, shaking and crying at the same time. Jason doesn't seem to notice it.

Instead there's food (that tastes of green) and water (green tinted or maybe that's just Tim) and a shower that Jason has to literally hold him under. The water sluices the green off his body and down the drain. Tim feels as though more oozes out his pores every second. His fourth death comes as Jason dries Tim off. When Tim goes for his throat he gets knocked backwards and cracks his skull on the heavy marble sink.

The fifth death takes a good bit longer to hit, long enough for Tim to wonder where Bruce and Dick are. Jason keeps him bound for two days, only easing the restraints enough that Tim's body isn't permanently damaged. That thought, 'permanent' damage, makes him giggle for several hours. Damian watches silently, no longer gagged or restrained. He doesn't reply to Tim's requests (screamed orders) to be freed, only watching with wary eyes and a sort of resignation that should not be seen on a child's face.

His fifth death comes on what Tim counts as the fifth day. He can't tell how much time passes between death and resurrection, so Tim ignores that time. Jason nearly dies under Tim's hands, clawing at the fingers Tim locks around his throat, but Damian stabs Tim in the spine, paralyzing him. They let him bleed out. He dies with Jason giving Damian a lesson on the best way to stab someone in the back, the ways to keep the knife from sticking in bone. Tim is tempted to add Shiva and King Snake's lessons but his heart fails before he can find the words.

Six. Attempting to escape. Seven. Blowing up the entire compound because Jason started to trust Tim. Eight. A complete accident while practice battling along the parapet outside the house. Tim slips and falls when Ra's' rotting head distracts him for a moment. Nine. Another practice death, this time with Damian who really is so cute. He tries so hard to be what Jason and Tim want. Poor thing obviously doesn't realize that no matter how hard he tries the time will come when it's his turn to be tortured and killed.

Killed a hundredfold. Tim's already certain that Jason is right about that. It's not enough that Damian dies for Robin's name, its position. No, he has to become another order of magnitude better than Tim, just as Tim is becoming an order of magnitude better than Jason and Jason was better than Dick. A hundred deaths will ensure that all foolish thoughts of love and approval and justice are burned out of him.

Death Ten, the most important death, the last death, comes when Bruce and Dick finally find them. He'd wondered in the back of his mind where Bruce and Dick were. Tim had been gone for weeks. The world's greatest detective certainly didn't do a very good job of finding people when it was his wayward, lost Robin.

Not that it mattered as Jason shoved the knife between Tim's ribs, laughing his perfectly broken laugh at the anguish and horror on Dick and Bruce's faces. Tim gasped and collapsed to the flagstones, bleeding out too fast to tell them that it was all right. He'd be back again. Just a quick dip and he'd be perfect. Finally perfect.

When he came back this time he was barely in the Pit at all. Damian was there. Jason was not. Tim gasped as the so familiar green healed the wound on his side, made his heart beat again, and filled his veins to replace the blood he'd lost.

"Jason?" Tim asks. His voice is strong, without any wobbling or silly emotional response.

"They took him away," Damian whispers, eyes wide and frightened. "Brother managed to ensure that they were driven away from your body for long enough but… they are searching for you, Timothy."

"Ah," Tim breathes. He smiles at the smell of green fills his lungs. "Perfect. Well done, habibi. Baby demon bird. Did you bring my clothes?"

"Yes," Damian says, brightening like the child he is at the praise.

He helps Tim out of the Lazarus Pit, helps Tim dry off. Damian passes him pieces of his new uniform, the one that is black with hints of red, covered with weapons that Tim learned how to use properly years ago, though he never allowed himself to fully utilize them. His version of the Helmet is black other than an 'X' across the face. Tim smiles as it snaps in place around his head.

"Come on habibi," Tim says to Damian, his replacement. "We have bats to tease and a brother to rescue."

"Will you… train me now?" Damian asks just nervously enough that Tim can't help but laugh and hug the boy. He stiffens and then clings to Tim even though he clearly knows that the hug is anything but comfort.

"Not yet, habibi," Tim chuckles once he lets Damian go. "It will happen eventually, I promise."

The way Damian's face goes pale and taut makes Tim laugh behind his helmet. Yes, in time Damian would be ready to be perfected. He still had some growing to do. Maybe he would let Bruce 'rescue' the boy. Dick would likely adore him. As they slip out of the hidden room with the Lazarus Pit Tim smiles behind his mask. That would be very good. One couldn't understand loss until one had something that one valued.

He had to come to treasure being Bruce's son, Dick's brother, being the baby Robin, before Tim came to perfect him.

A hundred deaths.

Tim would have to plan ahead to make sure that they taught Damian everything he needed to know about being a Replacement.  
The End


End file.
